Reviews Round-Up

David Cameron takes a tour around GlaxoSmithKline. Photograph: Getty Images.

Bad Pharmaby Ben Goldacre

Doctor, author and uncaged monkey Ben Goldacre’s second foray into the world of science-oriented abuse has been neatly reviewed by The Economist: “The book is slightly technical, eminently readable, consistently shocking, occasionally hectoring and unapologetically polemical. ‘Medicine is broken,’ it declares on its first page, and ‘the people you should have been able to trust to fix [its] problems have failed you.’” Helen Lewis, writing in the New Statesman, emphasises the difficultly of bringing an industry-wide malaise to public attention. “Explaining the myriad ways in which the evidence base is distorted, and the effect that has on real people, will never fit in a slogan, a headline or a tweet,” she writes, although the 137 character quote above would make a good starting point. Many reviewers express shock at the examples Goldacre gives, often too scandalous to be believed. “GlaxoSmithKline concealed the fact that one of its anti-depressants, paroxetine, increased the risk of suicide among children. It managed this because the drug was officially only licensed for use by over-18s and because it mixed the safety data for children in with that of adults, diluting the apparent risk.” The real strength of the book, Lewis decides, is that Goldacre is prepared to provide alternative models: “If poorly funded and easily swayed regulators can’t police the industry, then make the data available to everyone. Replace bewildering consent forms with shorter ones in plain English. Scrap the endless drug information labels that list every conceivable side effect (from heart attacks to bad breath) with simple checklists that show how common they are.”

The Year of Dreaming Dangerously by Slavoj Žižek

Reflecting on last year’s uprisings in New York, London, Greece and the Middle East, Žižek’s new book has been praised for its characteristically reorienting analysis, but criticised for its lack of direction. Poet Theo Dorgan, writing in the Irish Times, says: “This short book covers an immense amount of ground, with Žižek as a kind of manic avatar, a cosmic advance guard of the unborn future, examining and pronouncing on domination and exploitation under late capitalism, the return of ethnicity as a negative political driver, the Occupy movement (he’s for and against), the desert of post-ideology, unrest and upheaval in the Arab worlds, and what it means that we live in nonevental times.” Benjamin Kunkel, founding co-editor of n+1, wrote for the New Statesman that Žižek’s communism is “a heavy name very light of meaning.” “He disdains the idea, characteristic of ‘the archetypal left-liberal European moron’, that we need ‘a new political party that will return to the good old principles’ and ‘regulate the banks and control financial excesses, guarantee free universal health care and education, etc, etc’.” A good example of Žižek’s inimitable inability to finish his sentences there, which he often deems too tedious to bother following through. Yet Kunkel astutely recognises that instead of the entropic impasses which were the end of all of last year’s “dreams” (the death of Occupy, religion filling the political vacuum in the Arab world, nihilism and sneaker-grabbing in London), the period of greatest radical thinking was in fact amid the years of post-war reform, not in response to the neoliberal consensus that followed, “which demoralised radicals and reformers alike.” “Projects of reform, in other words, have tended to nourish hopes of revolution and vice versa. In present circumstances, the achievement of reforms might well pave, rather than bar, the way to a new society, not to mention relieving some of the human misery to be endured before the advent of the communist millennium,” Kunkel concludes, “If, on the other hand, the system were to prove incapable of incorporating any serious reforms, this would demonstrate the need for revolution that Žižek merely asserts.

Mick Jagger by Philip Norman

The chrysalis that miraculously turned into a butterfly “is a recurring motif in Philip Norman’s new biography of Mick Jagger, in which he charts in riveting detail Jagger’s own transformation from a humdrum LSE student in striped college scarf and cardigan into the beautiful renegade and rock star, living symbol of that naïve but in some ways rather wonderful 60s rebellious nonconformity,” Fiona MacCarthy writes in the Guardian. Norman, a former Times journalist who has written a biography of John Lennon and group-biographies of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones (twice), has “a novelist’s awareness of the oddities of human relationships, and Mick’s father emerges as a fascinating figure”. MacCarthy praises the book’s treatment of Jagger’s younger life, preferring some of incidents from later years as recorded in Keith Richard’s recent autobiography, Life. Charles Shaar Murray, writing in the Daily Mail, values Norman’s presentation of Jagger’s role as both “entrepreneur and entertainer, lord of the manor and lout of the parish”, and agrees with both MacCarthy and Norman that the first quarter-century of the Stones story is far more interesting than the second: “Fast-forwarding through the latter stages harms the story not at all. Norman tells it with commendable thoroughness, engaging wit and boundless energy, much as Jagger has shown over the decades. At tale’s end, rock ‘n’ roll toddlers will drift off into platinum slumbers.” He does add, “Sadly, Norman omits my favourite Jagger story: those famous rubber features had long hardened into seamed granite when the late George Melly ribbed him about his wrinkles. ‘Not wrinkles,’ Jagger replied. ‘Laughter lines.’ ‘Mick,’ retorted Melly, ‘nothing’s that funny.’” Mick Jagger will be reviewed in this week's issue of the New Statesman.